Demostene Andronescu – Poet of the communist prisons
“If I hadn’t managed to write poetry in prison, I would have died”.
Born on 3 December 1927 in Câmpuri, Vrancea County, on the border between the contemplative spirit of Moldavia and the humble spirit of the mountains, Demostene Andronescu is a rare mixture of poet and fighter, lyrical dreamer and man of action. His medieval knight’s nature prevented him from being “good” in the face of Communist torment, and at the same time saved him from perishing in the dungeons in which he suffered for 12 years. A former troop boy, he studied in Bucharest.
He graduated from the Faculty of History in 1952, but it was not until 1969 that he was allowed to graduate. For years he was forced to do unskilled work, and it was not until 1972 that he got a job that matched his education. Between 1952 and 1964, with the exception of a few months, he was a political prisoner, held in Jilava, Gherla and Aiud. After his release, the Securitate continued to harass him until December 1989. In 1995, he published his poetry from prison (Inner Landscape, Cardinal Points, Sibiu), and in the following years his memoirs from prison, Re-education at Aiud, and his book On the lookout at the cantilever of centuries (Christiana, Bucharest). He is considered the most important living poet from the communist prisons.
“In their wake, on my corpse”.
– Mr Demostene Andronescu, today we know that a unique and astonishing phenomenon developed in the prisons of communist Romania: prison poetry. In conditions of constant physical and mental torture, people found freedom, relief and hope in verse. How was this possible?
– In prison, a person dies first of all mentally. Deprived of any glimmer of spiritual life, he falls into depression, despair, hatred, and then collapses physically. To save themselves, many have instinctively turned to all kinds of spiritual activities. Those who had the vocation of prayer were saved first, but not all of us can experience prayer as an inner flame that gives them the strength to go on. And then the weakest prayers went down a notch, from the ethical to the aesthetic, from prayer to poetry. Because poetry was easier to remember, it became one of the forms of spiritual life for the prisoners, along with prayer.
– Was it simply a form of private or collective resistance? Did the poems circulate from one to another, did they strengthen you?
– First of all, it was a form of personal resistance. At least for me, if I hadn’t been able to find this way of expressing myself, I wouldn’t have survived. Of course, sharing some poetry created a certain relationship between people, and you saw some people light up, live poetry, be moved by it. Then those with good memories felt useful in learning the verses and passing them on to the other inmates in Morse code. In this way poetry, together with prayer, gave us all an intense spiritual energy. I knew some poems by Radu Gyr and Lucian Blaga by heart, which restored my morale and confidence. Whenever I felt desolate and disarmed, I would recite Gyr’s poem “Cavalcada” and immediately regain my strength.
“In the long, long tread of the great tread/ On heavy, heavy steeds,/ Chomping at the bit to get to the end,/ Tall, with fist on plate,/ So many pass and laugh as they hobble/ Behind them, on my gluttony./ Behind them, on my gluttony! / Their gallop swallows up the fences, / Their horseshoes break the flint, / Or they bring out the wolves to test me / With their rotten and evil tar, / For they have left me dozens of fences / Behind them, on my gorge./ Behind them, on my gorge!/ Neither thirst nor hunger stumbles them on their way, / Neither wounds wash their wounds at the cistern, / Nor mountains stand in their way. / I fall in every valley, / I leave rags in every ditch, / I climb on my chariot, / I follow them on my chariot! / And as the silent mist passes, / Towards nowhere, towards nowhere, / They run into the puddles, / And the first one falls from the saddle. / I walk past the ditch where he lies, / I walk on my cart. / I follow them on my ditch! / And one by one they begin to fall, / The sound of their tinkling, / I have no sword, I have no sword, / But I believe in a sliver of a star; / And when the ravens come to gnaw them, / I crawl up on my ditch. / I follow them on my ditch!
This poem was for me the “proof” and the supreme encouragement that I would overcome all difficulties, that I would persevere on my way, as best I could, but following a creed. It gave me indescribable strength, it lifted me out of my impasse. I felt the same way when I was composing poems.
“The poems were transmitted in Morse code, by tapping on the radiator pipes”.
– How did the poems circulate in prison?
– First of all, communication by Morse code became almost universal because there was an urgent need for information. We wanted to know what was going on, who had been brought in, who had died, who was being punished and how, if there was any news from the outside. It was very difficult to talk directly to people in other cells. So 95% of the prisoners knew Morse code. Even if we weren’t all so skilled, we could still communicate. The exceptions were the old and the sick, who couldn’t or wouldn’t learn. But not knowing Morse code was a big handicap. Especially in the evenings, when the guards were busy with other things, ‘messages’ were sent in Morse code, hammered into the radiator pipes, and real conferences were held on certain subjects. Poetry also began to circulate. The tone was set by Nichifor Crainic and Radu Gyr, the greatest poets of the prisons, followed by others, also very valuable, such as Andrei Ciurunga, Aurel Dragodan, Fane Vladoianu, who transmitted their poems.
But there were also some important cultural figures who knew by heart whole volumes of verses by our classical and interwar poets, as well as foreign poets, and transmitted them by Morse code. For example, Ovidiu Cotruș, Blaga’s student and tutor in his aesthetics department. They were all infected by this passion for poetry. As soon as it was transmitted by Morse, some of them, who had a very good memory, kept the poem, others wrote it with a splinter on a piece of soap or with a nail on the wooden edge of the bed and then learnt it in order to tell it later.
As you know, in prison we were not allowed to have writing utensils or paper. If we were caught with one, we were severely punished, and in any case we were not allowed to have it. So Blaga, Arghezi, Bacovia and others circulated orally, almost in complete editions. Those who didn’t know a single verse when they entered the prison came out with dozens of poems by heart.
– Didn’t the guards try to stop you communicating?
– Yes, they did. At first they thought we had books with us because we knew so many that they were told. And they searched for nothing. Then they called in specialists to see if you could communicate in Morse code by knocking on walls or radiator pipes. They concluded that it was impossible. But they didn’t take into account that the prisoner had nothing else to do and could practise until he achieved incredible results. We communicated by abbreviations, we understood a word only at the beginning and we communicated by a single sign that we understood, so we became very fast. There were some things that surprised us. Once I was in a cell with one of the best Morse senders and receivers, we were walking and talking. Suddenly he says: “Listen, there’s a batch from Jilava with so-and-so.” I said, “But how do you know?” “Didn’t you hear Morse?” He had such a trained ear that he could hear everything, even though he was talking to me at the same time.
“Since then I’ve gone on and on/ Not proud as the holy sun, / but proud as the moon”.
– Did you write poetry before going to prison, or did you discover this vocation in prison?
– I used to write poetry, like every Romanian – it is not for nothing that they say that Romanians are born poets (laughs) – in my youth. I wrote some verses, but then I got caught up in other things and abandoned poetry. Until around 1954, when I was in prison, I was put in solitary confinement with one of my good friends, Traian Anderca. During the communist holidays, as well as at Christmas and Easter, they would take the most rebellious of us out of our cells and isolate us so as not to give us any unpleasant surprises. That’s what happened this time.
This time there were two of us in the cell, with chains on our legs – and a few days later they put handcuffs on our hands too, but that’s another story. We hadn’t seen each other for a couple of years and we caught up with what had happened to us, then we started talking about what was bothering us. He was an avid reader of poetry and I had long been troubled by a poem by Blaga, “John tears himself in the wilderness”. I only remembered the beginning, which had become a motivator for me when my heart was heavy. I wanted someone to remind me of the rest of the poem and I couldn’t find anyone who knew it. Neither did Traian. It wasn’t until a few years later that I learned it, from someone, and got rid of the Elohim obsession. (laughs) “Where are you, Elohim?/ The world has flown from your hands/ like Noah’s corn./ Maybe you’re still waiting for it today./ Where are you, Elohim?/ We walk troubled and unwilling,/ through the shadows of the night we spy you,/ we kiss in the dust the star beneath our heels/ and we ask for you – Elohim! / We stop the sleepless wind,/ and we seek you with our nostrils,/ Elohim!/ We stop the strange animals in the spaces,/ and we ask them for you,Elohim!/ We look to the edges of the earth,/ we saints, we waters,/ we robbers, we stones,/ we know not the way back,/ Elohim, Elohim!”. (Elohim is a name used in the Old Testament for God – ed).
Well, one night when I was asking everyone in Morse code to tell me about Elohim, Trajan said: “Why are you knocking on foreign doors, why don’t you start writing, because I know you have some talent”. And so I wrote my first poem in prison, entitled “Preface”, which I recited to him the next morning, victorious: “For a while I begged for light/ Through strange doors,/ Not knowing that the full moon/ Was all inside me./ At the crossroads of life/ I stood with my hand outstretched/ And I was begged for mercy/ With the light out. / From time to time a spark / A madman’s spark / Seemed like a path, / To me it seemed like a gift./ And so I walked through life, / Beguiled by the world, / As it wandered through the fog, / I don’t know what./ But once, in the evening, / Tired of dreams, / I found all the gates of the world / Closed. // And I stood in the night without a candle,// Looking into the night/ As if into the night,// And suddenly I shuddered/ For I saw that inside me/ The darkness was all gone,/ And the light was shining.// I pushed aside the dross/ With a coldness,/ And in my dead depths/ A song arose. / And through my bleeding wound, / As through a crack, / A gentle ray / Of pure light has sprung, / Which, cheering me in all, / Silky, soft, / Has given my flat life / Vertical meanings. / Since then I’ve been shining, / Not proud as the proud sun, / But proud as the moon. / And when the bank gathers, / And closes my vein, / I’m like a fountain, / Deepening my wound”.
– Communist prisons were places of extermination. You were constantly tormented by hunger, cold, lack of rest, misery and often beaten. How did you find peace and resources for poetic inspiration?
– Youth works wonders. We had a strong physique, we had the hope, at least in the beginning, that we wouldn’t be imprisoned for long, we always found reserves of enthusiasm in ourselves. And then, I repeat, poetry was for us like prayer, or like training for an athlete – yes, it was a training of the mind and soul, without which we would have gone mad or died. For me, for example, poetry often replaced prayer. Now I am sure that these poems were whispered to me by someone. Otherwise I can’t explain how I came up with some pretty good verses – according to some connoisseurs. For example, I was once in solitary confinement for seven days. And when the guard had closed the door behind me, I began to count: 7 days times 24 hours makes 168 hours, multiplied by 60 minutes makes 10,080 minutes… But look, I said to myself, it’s already half an hour since I came in. That’s when the poem “Uselessness” came to me: “I gnaw at time, I gnaw at time,/ I search for a thought to overcome Olympus,/ With eagerness a thought seeks me,/ And inwardly it seems to be baking. // I gnaw at a mystery, I overcome an angel,/ I wriggle, I struggle, I bleed,/ My soul bends/ Like a heavy branch of rain…’ and so on. It’s a long poem…
– Did you replace prayer with poetry because it was more convenient, or because you felt there was something transcendent and mystical in it, which was still prayer?
– Poetry seemed to make it easier to connect with God. I could express my moments of rebellion, joy, doubt… Through prayer I experienced piety and faith. But I had many more moments of rebellion and despair than of humility and reconciliation. It was in such a moment that the poem “Doubt” was born, after a meeting with the writer Vasile Voiculescu. I had been moved to another room and looked around to see who was next to me, asking questions in Morse code. Someone in the cell above me answered and told me that Vasile Voiculescu was one of them. I asked him to say hello to the writer. Voiculescu wanted to talk to me, but he didn’t know Morse code.
I used another method. I put a tin cup on the radiator pipe and we took turns talking and when one spoke the other put his ear to his cup and we understood each other almost as if we were on the telephone. He asked me how I knew him. I told him only from his writings and complimented him a few times on his fantastic novels. He was ill – in fact, he was taken to hospital a few days later – and seemed very, very discouraged. This man, a monument of faith, had a doubt. And that’s when I came up with the poem ‘Doubt’: ‘Is there more, Lord, to heaven? Is there more/ Until you let me share in your light?/ Or maybe it was all just a story/ And I’ve climbed all this way for nothing. // I’ve been crawling on my elbows for so long / And I’ve snatched up so many lights on the way up / That if the climb takes much longer, maybe / Only the too high will remain safe. // And I’ve wasted so much soul, Father, / In my unbearably great desire, / That if I ever reach heaven again, / I’ll have nothing left to lay at your feet. // I’ve paid tribute to it at every tollbooth,/ I’ve spread it on every step,/ And I’m still wasting it, but I’m afraid/ No one will be waiting for me when I arrive./ Crawling, crawling, with my breath in my mouth,/ I climb the mountain with my breath rising;/ I’m still a drop of all I was./ Is there more, Lord, to the summit?”.
“So long I sometimes miss / The caressing, the galled eyes of the face”.
– How did you manage to remember so many lyrics, some written by others, some of your own?
– It was indeed a problem. And that’s why I passed them on to others, because sooner or later the poems would come back to their authors. Of the more than two hundred poems I wrote, I kept about one hundred. These are the ones that appeared in the volume Inner Landscape. At one point, when I had a serious backlog of my own poems, I found in a neighbouring cell a schoolboy with a very good memory who offered to memorise all my poems. And just the thought that they were in someone else’s head at home made it easier for me to work on other poems. Unfortunately, this student died in prison. Anyway, when I was writing, I was inspired and had a feeling that made me ignore the other poems.
– Were there particular moments that triggered the poems?
– Yes, like one bitter winter night in Aiud, when Constantin Gane, the author of “Trecute vieți de doamne și domnițe”, was mistreated. I was in solitary confinement, in unheated concrete cells, with the windows wide open, no bed, nothing to sit on. A terrible cold. If you lay down on the floor, you’d die. So we had to walk around the cell all the time. And at curfew, when we were given a rare blanket in our cell, we’d take the blanket and put it between our shoulder and the wall to rest a little, standing up. We had learned to sleep standing up, like horses. I had got used to sleeping and walking since the Securitate investigations, when we were not allowed to sleep for days and nights. I would take three steps to the door, automatically turn around and take another three steps to the wall, and so on, while I slept. But back to old Gane. During this time I prayed. When the guard gave him this little piece of blanket, the writer prayed that he would be taken out or that he would die. To which the guard replied: “Die, that’s why I brought you here, to die! And he closed the door. We all started banging on the metal doors, demanding to be taken to the infirmary. It was a hell of a racket. Within 20 minutes more guards arrived, led by the political officer and Colonel Gheorghe Crăciun, the prison commander. We asked them to bring the prosecutor to see how we were being treated and to get old Gane out of there. Colonel Crăciun was in a quandary for a while, he must have consulted with the others, and finally he ordered Constantin Gane to be taken to the infirmary. Then they all left and it was quiet again. After about half an hour I tried to continue my prayer, but I felt that I could not pray any more, and I found myself saying: “Tonight, Lord, you will go to bed hungry. I didn’t sleep all night, but I wrote the poem “Instead of Prayer”. The suffering of old Constantine Gane had made a deep impression on me.
– Did you write any love poems in prison?
– Only a few, because I was arrested before I really knew love.
I had no experience. (He smiles bitterly.) I had a girl I used to talk to, but after I was sentenced to 20 years in prison, I realised I could never see her again and tried to forget her. And then there were other feelings that flooded me in that environment. However, in the poem “Regrets” I show pretty much how I felt about my unrequited loves. “So long do I sometimes miss / The caresses, the gallant girl’s eyes / With soft lids and trembling lashes / Beneath which cunning glances lurk; / And so tired am I of waiting,/ My lip is burnt with longing,/ I long for longings that have rotted within me,/ My soul is worn out with longings,/ I’m a graveyard of unfulfilled longings,/ And unfulfilled sins,/ Of soft desires that are in me/ And they trouble me like all the others,/ But find no spring to flow. / I miss your deep and wide eyes,/ I long for your eyes,/ I weep for my past/ With tears that flow to God”.
– Of all the poems you’ve written, which is your favourite?
– All of them are dear to me, because they spring from the preplanning of the emotions I was experiencing at the time. But I think the ones about rebellion are the closest to me because that was the state I was in. I was an innocent young man who was suffering terribly and I could not understand why and how God allowed such things to happen. I was also indignant at the Romanian world, because it was inactive and did not oppose an atheistic and criminal regime.
(Claudiu Târziu – Formula AS magazine, issue 1003 of January 2012).